Someone rapped on the door, and Diana Ashmore said, “Jeffrey? Do you mind if I come in?”
Jeffrey closed his eyes and sent up a wordless prayer to heaven. They’d been such good friends, once, and then he’d become King and suddenly her interest in him had gone from friendly to romantic. She’d been subtle about it, at least at first, but in the last several months she’d done everything she could to convince him she was the best choice to be Consort. And she would be an excellent Consort; she was intelligent and politically astute and charming and she did seem to like him, though he doubted she was actually in love with him. But Jeffrey had seen how his parents looked at each other, and he wasn’t going to settle for “like.” “Of course,” he called out, and the guards opened the door.
“It’s a wonderful performance, isn’t it?” Diana said. She sat in Imogen’s chair and looked out over the audience—positioning herself, Jeffrey realized, so anyone who looked up would see her in the royal box. “And you have a wonderful view. I can’t believe I’ve never been in here.”
“I didn’t realize you cared about theater, or I would have invited you,” Jeffrey said, and immediately cursed himself for that slip of the tongue. Don’t encourage her, fool.
Diana’s eyes brightened, and she laid her hand caressingly on his knee. “There will be other plays, Jeffrey,” she cooed. “And I think you owe me something after yesterday.”
“It was the right decision, Diana. You know that.”
“Of course. But I won’t say I wasn’t a little disappointed.” Her smile didn’t quite reach her eyes. Jeffrey didn’t respond. There was nothing he could say that would change the fact that the new territory wasn’t hers to govern.
The door opened again. Imogen took a few steps into the box and then stopped. “Hello,” she said. Jeffrey felt a little sick now. He definitely didn’t need Diana interfering in his secret courtship.
“Oh, Imogen, what a pleasant surprise to find you here,” she said. “Jeffrey, how kind of you to introduce the ambassador to one of Aurilien’s great cultural treasures. Do you mind if I share your box for the second act? I’m with friends who don’t appreciate the theater as much as I do. Help me convince him, Imogen,” she added, looking over her shoulder at Imogen and smiling a pleasant smile.
His stomach was knotting itself around his spine. He couldn’t think of a single thing that would get Diana out of the box that didn’t include telling both women this was meant to be courtship. “Of course we don’t mind,” he said. “Imogen, the second act’s about to start, why don’t you take your seat?”
Imogen looked at Diana. Diana’s smile looked triumphant now. “I will enjoy this,” Imogen said, and sat on Diana’s other side. Diana took Jeffrey’s hand and squeezed it, then didn’t let go immediately. He gently extricated himself and tried to ignore her, focusing on the play, but he was aware only of Imogen, sitting too far away from him and laughing as if she didn’t mind her seat at all. This was turning out to be one of the least comfortable nights of his life. He’d never been so close to telling Diana she didn’t have a chance with him, would never have a chance with him, and he wasn’t sure if it was good sense or cowardice that kept him from doing so.
When the curtain came down a final time and they finished applauding, Diana still didn’t rise. “Thank you so much for sharing your escort, Imogen,” she said. “You understand how attached old friends can be.” She put her hand on Jeffrey’s knee and patted it. Jeffrey wished he could grab her wrist and shove her away. How much longer was he going to continue to let her treat him as her personal property?
Imogen smiled brightly at her. “I am sorry for you,” she said, “because it is hard for you to find your own escort.” She looked so innocent that it took Jeffrey a moment to hear the slap in those words. “Perhaps you should find other friends to be attached to.”
Diana’s face was frozen in the act of saying something. Her eyes went narrow. “You—” she began angrily, then glanced at Jeffrey and turned it into a smile. “We really should go together sometime, Jeffrey,” she said, and kissed him lightly on the cheek in the manner of an old friend. The smile she bestowed on Imogen as she left was not even a little bit friendly. Jeffrey had to swallow a laugh.
When the door shut behind Diana, he said, “That was unexpected.”
“She was rude first.”
“I know. That wasn’t a criticism. I had no idea you could be so…catty.”
“I do not—did not like her behaving as though I am intruding on her evening.”
Jeffrey smiled, just that thin little smile, but inside he was turning joyful cartwheels. She thinks this is an evening together. She wants to be with me. Sweet heaven, what do I do? “I apologize,” he said. “I shouldn’t have asked her to stay. I hated to tell her no tonight when I essentially told her the biggest ‘no’ you can imagine yesterday.”
“I know she is your friend, but she is not a nice person sometimes.”
Not a nice person, ever, I think. “She certainly has been more obvious in her, um, bid for my affections lately.” He touched his cheek, imagining Diana’s kiss as a brand scorching his skin. “Shall we go? I doubt Diana is waiting around downstairs to accost me again.”
“And if she is you can have your guards carry her away,” Imogen said, and the picture of Diana being hauled away by the guards, screaming obscenities at him, made Jeffrey laugh.
Jeffrey assisted Imogen into the carriage and sat down opposite her. “I hope you enjoyed the play,” he said, and immediately felt stupid. Couldn’t he think of anything more substantial to say?
“I did,” Imogen said. “There are others?”
“There are two other theaters, and then each theater will put on new performances every few months. We could go to see another, if you like, sometime.”
“You do not mind?”
I wish I could spend every minute with you. “Not at all. I want you to enjoy the best Aurilien has to offer.”
Imogen nodded. Jeffrey cast about for something else to say and came up empty. He watched Imogen for a while, concealing his interest by looking in every other direction. She didn’t even sit like any other woman he knew; she was alert, her body relaxed but ready to act if that was necessary, her eyes scanning her surroundings and no doubt observing a hundred things Jeffrey missed. Even Diana, who for all her personal shortcomings was an excellent swordswoman, didn’t look as much like a warrior as Imogen did. He recalled what Mairen had said of her, that there was more to her than her warrior nature, and thought She may look like a lady, but she’s never let go of the warrior.
“May I ask you something you might find insulting?” he said before he could stop himself.
Imogen’s gaze came to rest on him. “You will ask and then I will not be insulted even if it is insulting,” she said with a smile, but her body was tense, and he wished he hadn’t said anything. Too late now.
He leaned forward, hoping by that gesture to make his question more personal. “Mairen told me there was a part of you that wasn’t a warrior,” he said. “I’ve seen you become a diplomat and a part of Tremontanan society, and I think maybe that’s what she was talking about. But it seems to me you’re still clinging to the warrior part of you, and not allowing yourself to see what it’s like to truly become this new self. I was wondering why that is.”
Imogen drew in a harsh breath, then turned away to look out the window. Jeffrey wanted to kick himself. He hadn’t meant that as an attack, but she’d reacted as if he’d punched her. “I apologize,” he said. “I shouldn’t have asked such a personal question.” So much for courting her. Ever.
Imogen shook her head. “It is a true question,” she said, swiping tears from her eyes that made his heart ache. “I made a promise to learn and I did not keep it.”
“Why is that?”
“That is a personal question.”
Jeffrey was grateful she couldn’t see him blush in the light from the street lamps. “You’re right,” he said. “Don’t ans
wer that.”
She sighed, a little shakily. “I am fighting with myself, all the time I am here. I think I know, inside me, I am only a warrior because I know nothing else, and I am afraid I will want to be another thing when I know what that is.”
“Would it be so bad, being a diplomat instead of a warrior?”
“I am leaving behind everything I know.”
She sounded so forlorn that Jeffrey moved to sit next to her, not quite daring to take her hand, but offering her comfort the only way he knew how anymore. “That’s never easy,” he said. “Especially when you’re leaving your life behind for something you know nothing about.”
“That is it. I must learn new things and do new things and I cannot know if I am right until after I have done them.”
“I understand that.”
“Do you? I do not see how.” Her words were angry, resentful that he’d tried to usurp her experience, and pain struck him so unexpectedly that he had no defenses against it.
“I was never meant to be King, Imogen,” he said. “I was the…have you ever heard the phrase ‘the heir and the spare’? I was the spare. I didn’t have to learn to rule. I was going to go into business—the theater business, actually—and I had my whole life planned. Then Sylvester…left, and that was the end of every one of my plans. I’d never even imagined myself as heir.”
To his surprise, Imogen took his hand. Her palm was warm and smooth and he couldn’t help it, he closed his fingers around her hand and held onto it. “And then you were King,” she said quietly.
“And then I was King,” he echoed. “Another role for which I was unprepared. Imogen, I’m not going to tell you I understand what you’ve experienced. I just know what it’s like to be thrust into a life you aren’t prepared for, that you could never have imagined.”
“But what do I do?” She was close enough that he could see her eyes clearly despite the dim light. “I do not want to be a stranger to me.”
“If it’s what you’re meant to be, you’ll find you know yourself better than ever,” he said. “At least, that’s what Mother says. I haven’t yet learned for myself if it’s true.”
She smiled at him. “You have not yet realized that you are a good King.”
I could never be as good as my father. “I haven’t destroyed Tremontane yet. That must mean something.”
“And I think you are a good man. Maybe that is more important.”
He became conscious, again, of her hand in his, of how close she was, of how her eyes were on a level with his, and before his brain could override his heart, he reached up with his free hand to caress her cheek. Her eyes went wide. “Jeffrey,” she said, faintly. Her skin was soft, like rose petals, not at all what he expected of a warrior, and he stroked her cheek again, marveling at her beauty. Her lips parted as if to say something, then she leaned forward and kissed him.
He let go of her hand and put his arms around her to draw her closer, returning her kiss. She smelled of roses and, very faintly, of horses, and the two scents mingled in the air, making him want to go on breathing the smell of her forever. He explored her mouth with his kisses, gently, though his body was telling him to push her up against the side of the carriage and let her feel the passion that surged through him.
She had her arms around his neck now and was running her fingers through his hair, which inflamed him further, and he slid one hand down her back to the base of her spine and stroked her there. Then the carriage bumped to a stop, and his teeth grazed her lower lip, which made her laugh. It was such a merry sound that Jeffrey smiled, a real smile, and said, “I don’t think I’m ready to stop, are you?”
Imogen shook her head. “It has only been two minutes. That is not enough.”
Jeffrey disentangled himself long enough to rap on the carriage roof. “Go once around the Park,” he said, and the carriage jerked back into motion. He took her into his arms once more and said, “I would apologize, but I have been thinking about doing that for several days now and I feel absolutely no regret.”
“If you have been thinking about it for several days, I do not know it,” Imogen said.
“I’ve learned to be good at concealing what I feel, after three years of dealing with my Council. I didn’t want to burden you with my interest, if you weren’t interested in me.”
“So you are courting me when you ask if I want to see the play.”
“I hoped it wasn’t obvious. I panicked a little because of those damned invitations. I knew they would just keep coming and I would eventually run out of reasons for you to reject them. So I decided to court you secretly, give you time to get used to the idea before I declared myself. That way, if my charms didn’t appeal to you—”
She interrupted him with a long, tender kiss that made him temporarily forget what he was saying. “You appeal to me,” she said. “I thought you should know.”
“Fortunate for both of us, then,” he said with a smile. “At any rate, either you would be receptive to my courtship, or we’d be two friends who happened to enjoy the same social activities. Either of those outcomes would be acceptable.”
She raised her eyebrows at him. “Really?”
He leaned forward until their foreheads touched. “No,” he said. “I was never going to be happy until I held you in my arms, just like this.”
“I think you know how to talk to women.”
He laughed, thinking back on how nervous he’d been earlier. “Just you.” He kissed her forehead. “So, if two minutes is too short, what would be long enough?”
“If you always kiss like you do then, I do not think I could put a number on that.”
He kissed the scar that emerged from the neck of her gown to extend across her collarbone. “I do have to take you home sometime, you know.”
“But sometime is not…oh, Jeffrey, do that again.”
He nipped at her earlobe, then kissed behind her ear. “I should warn you,” he said, “that I intend to take full advantage of you being trapped in this carriage with me.”
She laughed, a low, throaty sound that made him wish the carriage were a little roomier, and said, “If take advantage means you kiss me again with your wonderful mouth, I like it.” He laughed, and kissed her beautiful lips, making speech impossible.
The carriage once again came to a stop, startling Jeffrey, who’d completely lost track of time. Imogen drew back a bit and regarded him with those lovely dark eyes. “Sometime is now,” she said. “I wish it was not true.”
He stroked her cheek one last time. “Will you dance with me at the Spring Ball tomorrow?”
“Of course.”
Her near-indignation, that he might think she wouldn’t say yes, made him laugh. “Just one dance, though,” he said. “I’m not ready for the world to know about our changed relationship, madam ambassador.”
“This is a thing you are ashamed of?”
“No, but the implications of the King of Tremontane being romantically involved with an ambassador of a foreign country are…complicated.”
She withdrew her arms and crossed them over her chest. “Then you should not have kissed me,” she said.
He felt like he’d been slapped. Imogen was no longer smiling; anger creased her forehead, and her lips were pinched and set tight. “Imogen,” he began, then registered how her eyes were creased with amusement and her lips were compressed because they were holding back a laugh. “You’re teasing me,” he said with relief.
She flung her arms around his neck and kissed him, a light, playful kiss. “I think you should not have your own way all the time.”
“I think there’s little danger of that with you around,” he said. “I’ll walk you to your door.”
He waved away the guard—they were only going half a dozen steps up the embassy stairs—and tried not to cling to her arm, instead grazing her knuckles with a kiss. “Good night, my dear…ambassador,” he said with a smile, and waited for her to shut the door behind herself before getting back into the carriage a
nd directing the driver to return to the palace. He could still feel her lips on his, could still smell the sweet-musk scent of her, and that wide, unfamiliar smile spread across his face.
He could never have anticipated this. They’d only been apart for a minute and already he couldn’t wait to see her again. I’m falling in love with her, he thought, and shivered with joy. True, she was the ambassador, which made things tricky; he’d have to come up with ways they could be alone that didn’t look suspicious. Mother would definitely notice something was up if he wasn’t careful.
He counted days in his head. A little more than eleven months, and her term as ambassador would be up, and he’d be able to court her publicly. He wished he could do it now, declare to the whole world that Imogen of the Kirkellan had kissed him, but he was the King and he didn’t have the freedoms Prince Jeffrey North had once had. For the first time in almost four years, he felt no resentment over that thought.
Jeffrey: The Spring Ball
“You seem a little restless,” Mother said. “Usually I’m the one who wishes I were elsewhere.”
“I think it’s the boundary decision,” Jeffrey lied. “I’m a little weary of people wanting to talk to me about it.”
“They aren’t asking you to change your mind, are they?”
“No. They want to discuss their candidates for the new Baronies. I wish I dared just make a decision quickly, shut them all up, but this is a major turning point for Tremontane and whatever I decide is going to have long-term ramifications. So I can’t hurry, however much I might want to.”
“Which is why you’re hiding over here.”
“I’m sitting where everyone can see me, Mother.”
“You know people are reluctant to approach you when you’re sitting on that chair. It intimidates them. You’ll have to leave it sometime.” She was teasing him, but he could tell when she meant her words. “Why don’t you dance?”
Tales of the Crown Page 26